We headed outside this morning to dig ourselves out.
(Side memo to self: Create “I survived the Big Dig Out of ’08” T-shirts, sell for $20 in the market, make millions.)
The Wee One was down for a nap and the older two were watching a movie, so I went out to lend a hand. The snow in the driveway was knee deep, at best; in other places it had blown up to thigh-deep on me. After several minutes of “shovelling” — but not actually making a dent in the snow — we just had to collapse into laughter, because it was so completely fruitless. Quickly we realised that there just weren’t any more places to put snow and we didn’t really know what to do. eventually caved in and did something he swore he would never do — walked down the street to borrow a snowblower from MyFriendJen. It did the majority of the work, allowing us to just do some touch ups and shovel the walk. Thank God.
Then the plow came by.
We just came inside from another couple of hours spent clearing the plow stuff from the end of the driveway; again, we had no where to put it, so we wound up putting it basically back out on the street, where it will no doubt end up back in our driveway later today. But at least we can get out to get some groceries now.
This all sounds very grim but actually, it’s kind of a party outside. Everyone is outside shovelling — dads, moms, kids, boyfriends, no-good louts that sleep on your couch because they won’t get a job and a place of their own. We’d shovel a little, then chat a little. How is the baby next door doing? How is the girl down the street enjoying school? Do you think we’ll break the snowfall record?
The snowbanks along everyone’s driveway are well over my head; I’d guess they are around 10 feet tall. The boys next door made a totally awesome sledding hill from the trench their dad was using to clear snow using his scoop. We spent a good hour with them sledding — fun for everyone! From the top of the hill I could almost see forever.
We took lots of pictures. I think it’s safe to say that I’ve never seen so much snow in my lifetime, and probably (I hope!) we’ll never see this much again. It’s really kind of cool. No pun intended.
TurtleHead 
Yeah, we’re running out of places to put all the snow, too. It’s pretty ridiculous. Our piles aren’t quite as high as yours, though. I think ours are about 6 ft high.
We were lucky about getting rid of the stuff the plow left in the driveway. We live across from a factory, and the factory plow driver plowed the bottom of the driveway for us. They’ve never done it before, so I was surprised, but very happy.
I was going to make pretty much this exact post but now you’ve saved me the trouble!
And I’ll take one of those t-shirts.
To quote ,
Are you fucking serious? You don’t own a snowblower?
You do realize that you live in the coldest capital in the world, don’t you?
If ever succeeds in convincing me to move back to Canada, you can bet I won’t be shoveling our driveway by hand. Pray why do you resist?
Actually, enjoys the shovelling. It’s a good workout and he takes pride in having done such a nice job by hand. Plus there is often a social aspect to the job, as he gets to chit chat with all the other Daddies on the block.
Most years it isn’t really a problem. Last year he only actually shovelled the driveway, I think, maybe 4 or 5 times at most — there was very little snow. This year, though, it’s just gotten out of hand.
Apparently there isn’t a snowblower to be had anywhere in the city right now. I bet next year there will be a big run on them! Not us though — on top of enjoying the work, we also have no way to store the thing without giving up our ability to park both cars in the garage. And this year, with all the snow, being able to park both cars in the garage is almost as valuable as having a snowblower!